(JTA) — Alan Dershowitz has nominated Jared Kushner and Avi Berkowitz, the Trump administration officials who shaped the Abraham Accords, for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Dershowitz, the famed lawyer and pro-Israel activist, is an eligible nominator in his capacity as an emeritus professor at Harvard University, Reuters reported Monday.
Kushner, former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and a leading White House adviser, and Berkowitz, the top Middle Eastern envoy during the last administration, brokered normalization agreements 2020 between Israel and four Arab nations: the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan.
The agreements have triggered overt signs of acceptance of Israel and of Jews not seen in decades in the region, including declarations most recently recognizing International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Israel was not at war with any of the countries and had sub rosa ties with each of them. At least three of the countries earned quid quo pros from the Trump administration in the deals, among them the sale of stealth combat jets to the UAE, which President Joe Biden has said he will review.
Dershowitz, who is close to Trump and was one of his defense lawyers in his first impeachment, alluded to the cloud that the former president is now under for inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, a deadly riot that triggered his second impeachment.
“The Nobel Peace Prize is not for popularity,” Dershowitz wrote in his nomination, which Reuters quoted. “Nor is it an assessment of what the international community may think of those who helped bring about peace. It is an award for fulfilling the daunting criteria set out by Alfred Nobel in his will.”
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